Oh yes. Because, usually, the bad men who invade your home don't stop to think that you might be armed so they barge in making lots of noise and making sure you have plenty of time to wake up, load your gun, and blow them away.

Despite what Franklin is suggesting, I'm not against your right to defend yourself. I am all for you having the right to self-defense. Not something I would do, but I respect that you would. I don't, however, believe that one should equate their life(or their family's lives) with material possessions.

No but you took a good point to an illogical extreme. "Don't shoot guy stealing hubcaps" good point. "Don't protect private property ever" silliness.

Any habitual action, such as eating or dressing, may be performed on the appropriate occasion, without any need of thought, and the same seems to be true of a painfully large proportion of our talk. -- Bertrand Russell

Again, how do you figure your material possessions are worth more than human life? The responsibility IS yours. You're the one holding the gun. You are being asked to make that decision. Don't weasel out and say that the thief made that decision. You are making it. Do you believe it's morally right to take a human life if you don't need to?

As far as I'm concerned, the thief did make that decision when he broke into my home. Do you weasel out and say that I'm the one at fault for defending my family and stuff. It really is simple, if you don't want to get shot, don't break into other people's homes. If someone is too stupid to grasp that concept, then I guess that is where the theory of natural selection comes into play.

Wow, that was the most satisfactory neg I've given in all my time on this board. It is a shame that I was banned during this thread, because I would have had a blast. JimLes, dude, please... Don't ever have children.

Wow, that was the most satisfactory neg I've given in all my time on this board. It is a shame that I was banned during this thread, because I would have had a blast. JimLes, dude, please... Don't ever have children.

I know, it was pull your ****ing hair out mind blowingly nuts the stuff he was saying about not defending your own property.

If they find out he was high at the time it makes it LESS likely he attacked Zimmerman. Just sayin'.

But they do believe he had smoked pot within a couple hours of the encounter. Also that he had been sending a series of angry texts back and fourth with a friend of his and was on the phone with the friend he was fighting with at the time of the encounter with Zimmerman.

It seems to me that Zimmerman's defense is to smear Martin. The kid could have been a serial rapist at his school. None of that mattered at the time Zimmermann murdered Martin. He had no way of knowing the kid's background. Nor does it justify his actions. Quite honestly, I am sickened at how this case has been carried out thus far.

I doubt we will ever know what truly happened as only 1 person survived this incident. If only we could ask Trayvon what really happened.

IMO, I'm just sick and tired of mall cops. These guys are usually punks with self esteem issues. They are less concerned with the safety of others than with their own egos. Zimmermann had a long history of trying to make himself feel important. He routinely jumped the gun and called the police at any lil squeak or shout in the neighborhood. this dude needed a real job... badly!

Although, that probably has about as much relevance as Trayvon's past...

Was he acting in self defense or not? What gave him the right to stalk Trayvon? Why didnt he back away when cops told him to leave the kid alone?

I'm sure Martin was worried that some weird creepy dude was following him aroun but that is not a crime.

The issue is did Zimmerman have "justifiable cause" for shooting Martin. Did it go from Zimmerman being some weird wanna be cop following him to Martin whoopin that ass to the point Zimmerman felt his life was in danger. These photos certainly help his case.

I think what I've decided is that while Zimmerman is the reason he is dead he had no intention of killing or even harming Martin. I think he gets manslaughter or is let off.

I agree with you. As tragic as this is, I would feel uncomfortable with Zimmerman getting anything more than manslaughter or something like that. I'm inclined to think it was just a stupid, tragic sequence of events that was, unfortunately, entirely avoidable, if one or both had not escalated.

It seems to me that the defense case is somewhat akin to blame the rape victim, e.g., she was a slut, so if she had it coming, or if she didn't have it coming, at least it's understandable.

The fact that Zimmerman was injured to me can be reasonably interpreted in a number of ways. How do we know, for example, that Martin didn't feel imminent threat so he chose fight instead of flight? How do we know, moreover, that Zimmerman did not instigate the physical struggle and Martin was merely fighting back? If I'm attacked physically, for example, I will do all I can to incapacitate my attacker, including, if I need to, slamming his head on the pavement. Since Martin is dead, we don't know his side of the story. I'm asking this honestly, is there any information where we can safely rule out that Martin felt imminent threat or that Zimmerman was the one who instigated the fight?

I was talking about the hypothetical scenario where he doesn't get the gun, but yeah, I guess we should assume that everything else happened the same way before.

Of course, race already is a huge part of this story, so it still would be had Martin pummeled him. Most of the stuff surrounding this story is spin, anyway.

What I find so discouraging about this case (other than the tragedy of it all) is the rush to judgment by people to construe the story to fit within whatever their political/social/racial predilections are. While I'm hard pressed to believe that shooting Martin was an appropriate response in any case (it may have been, but I'm very skeptical), I'm would like to know what really happened so that justice is done, regardless of the outcome. I just hate the way things like this get politicized, but it's, unfortunately, the way it is sometimes.

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